Since you seem to grasp the structural tension here, you might find it interesting that one of EN’s aims is to develop an argument that does not rely on Dennett’s contradictory “Third-Person Absolutism”—that is, the methodological stance which privileges an objective, external (third-person) perspective while attempting to explain phenomena that are, by nature, first-person emergent. EN tries to show that subjective illusions like qualia do not need to be explained away in third-person terms, but rather understood as consequences of formal limitations on self-modeling systems.
Since you seem to grasp the structural tension here, you might find it interesting that one of EN’s aims is to develop an argument that does not rely on Dennett’s contradictory “Third-Person Absolutism”—that is, the methodological stance which privileges an objective, external (third-person) perspective while attempting to explain phenomena that are, by nature, first-person emergent. EN tries to show that subjective illusions like qualia do not need to be explained away in third-person terms, but rather understood as consequences of formal limitations on self-modeling systems.